Questions raised as London Bridge attackers named

By Costas Pitas and David Milliken

British police and security services had previously investigated one of the Islamist militants who carried out Saturday's attack in London, police have said.

But with resources scarce, he was not deemed enough of a threat to warrant close monitoring.

The news raises questions about the police's judgement and increases pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May, who three days before a national election is facing criticism for overseeing cuts to police during her years as interior minister.

In Britain's third Islamist attack in as many months, three men on Saturday rammed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before running into the Borough Market area, where they slit throats and stabbed people indiscriminately.

Seven people were killed and dozens wounded.

All three attackers were shot dead by police, who made at least a dozen arrests in east London on Sunday and carried out further raids on yesterday.

Two named

All 12 people arrested after the attack have now been released without charge.

Police on Monday named two of the attackers and said they were trying to identify the third.

One, 27-year-old Khuram Shazad Butt, was a British citizen born in Pakistan who had already been investigated by police and Britain's domestic spy agency MI5.

"However, there was no intelligence to suggest that this attack was being planned, and the investigation had been prioritised accordingly," police said.

Another attacker, 30-year-old Rachid Redouane, went by the alias Rachid Elkhdar and claimed to be Moroccan or Libyan, police said.

He and Butt lived in the same area of east London.

Police cuts

The rampage followed a suicide bomb attack which killed 22 adults and children at a concert in Manchester two weeks ago, and an attack in March when five people died after a van was driven into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge.

May described the latest incident as "an attack on the free world".

But with Britons due to vote in a national election on Thursday, her decision to reduce the number of police officers in England and Wales by almost 20,000 during her six years as interior minister from 2010 to 2016 shot to the top of the political agenda.

May did not answer repeated questions from reporters on her cuts, but said counter-terrorism budgets had been protected and police had the powers they needed.

Police said they had to prioritise resources on suspects who were believed to be preparing an attack or providing active support for one.

Butt did not fall into this category when they last investigated him.

"It's just a fact that, over the last seven years, we as a city have lost 600 million pounds from our budgets. We have had to close police stations, sell police buildings, and we've lost thousands of police staff," said London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a member of the opposition Labour Party.

May's main opponent, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, backed calls for her resignation over the police cuts.

He said many people were "very worried that she was at the Home Office for all this time, presided over these cuts in police numbers, and now is saying that we have a problem".

May hit back by criticising Corbyn, a pacifist who has opposed some security legislation in parliament and expressed reservations in the past about police responding to armed attackers with "shoot-to-kill" tactics.

Corbyn's critics have often accused him of weakness on terrorism, citing his sympathy for members of the Palestinian group Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army. The IRA ran a 30-year armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.

The Conservative Party's lead over Labour has narrowed markedly from 20 points or more when May called the election in April to a range between one and 12 points now, although the Conservatives are still widely expected to win a majority.